Please, for the sake of all things sacred, don't use MS Paint. Use something like GraphicsGale, or maybe PyxelEdit.

Busy between school, work, life, games, programming and general screwing around.If you'd like some pixel art for your game, send me a PM, i'll see what I can do.Current project: http://elementalwarblog.wordpress.com/

If you need precision and simple use (which is what pixel art is about), I recommend Paint.NET. It allows you to have full control over the alpha channel too. In general, it's much better for basic pixel art than GIMP.

GIMP is not very easy to use for pixel art, as much of the tools are for more advanced editing and doesn't work well for pixel-precision.

There are lots of other sprite editors you can use, it's just that Paint.NET is the only one that gives so much control over the alpha channel.

Believe it or not, I use Game Maker 8 to do my graphics. It has a lot of tools, it makes everything easy, and you can easily export stuff to strips, transparency, etc. There are only rare occasions when I get mad at it D:

I've also had good results using GIMP's filters. Design simple in paint using fill tool and lines, then use GIMP to change lightness (just 1 line on an edge say), reduce saturation, then cartoonify, bumpmap, or 'add bevel' are my 3 chosen effects. Ofc as novasharp said noise is great too, just keep the 'holdness' high. (This would be my advise to anyone incompetant and struggling with gfx for their game like myself)

Believe it or not, I use Game Maker 8 to do my graphics. It has a lot of tools, it makes everything easy, and you can easily export stuff to strips, transparency, etc. There are only rare occasions when I get mad at it D:

Yeah, I used to do that, but then I started using C# and then Java for games and now I don't have game maker installed. Game Maker was really awesome, but the free version was too limited. It was awesome for learning, though!

The free version of game maker is pretty much enough for me to do pixel art. I don't think it goes into the crazy stuff like photoshop and stuff

Yeah, I agree. I was just talking about its capabilities for making games. The scripting is limited in free (you can't rotate sprites, etc...). But the sprite editor was good. I esp. liked its ability to easily make animations & sprite sheets as you said.

Believe it or not, I use Game Maker 8 to do my graphics. It has a lot of tools, it makes everything easy, and you can easily export stuff to strips, transparency, etc. There are only rare occasions when I get mad at it D:

I thought I was the only one who did that! Although I don't code in GM anymore, I still love its sprite editor. Also, the animation strips make life so easy.

Contrarily to what is usually said, GIMP is easy to use for pixel art: 1) use the pencil tool 2) with a 1 pixel brush. Done.Plus you have all of GIMP's powerful features ready, would you need them.

Tried few others software specialized in pixel art, never liked them that much.For me the decisive feature of GIMP is complete freedom with keyboard shortcuts.They can be customized, so I can really enter into "the flow" because they totally suit me.

In the end, the tool doesn't matter much, it's how comfortable and productive you are with it.I tend to use as few tools as possible, so I become really productive with them.

As an added note to anyone viewing who has an iOS device, I use SpriteSomething, and it does exactly what I need. I still recommend using tiled for maps over the tilemap editor, however.

Busy between school, work, life, games, programming and general screwing around.If you'd like some pixel art for your game, send me a PM, i'll see what I can do.Current project: http://elementalwarblog.wordpress.com/

Just throwing my vote out there for paint.net! I always felt like photoshop was overkill for basic image editing, and I think we can all agree its way too expensive (thank god for thepiratebay). Ms paint always felt way to basic and it couldn't perform some of the rather simple operations that I depend on. Paint.net has always been good for me!

Gimp - since 2.8 - sucks for pixel editing.They messed up the brushes, very cumbersome nowand saving does not allow to save to png directly without an annoying popup.

I don't feel like pressing enter twice instead of once is going to really lower your progress rate. I haven't used GIMP a lot for pixel art, but when I did I didn't have any trouble at all. I just made a transparent canvas (is that what it's called?) and then used the pencil on 1 size and it was as easy as that. The eraser is kind of annoying however since it erases gradually which I don't want.

I use it for all my sprite-editing. Supports onion layers, and is dead easy to use.. Not sure on the license, as nothing is told or included in the downloaded archive. You're also able to add sounds and static images to your "project" and it exports a zipped XML-file containing image data, the duration of each frame of the animation and other goodies..

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